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If you’ve got some Christmas decorating to do, don’t feel like you have to choose store-bought garlands made from petroleum by-products. Instead, DIY one of these delightful paper garlands and make an eco-friendly heirloom. Or make an upcycled decoration that you can toss guilt-free into the recycling on January 1! Paper Chains paper chain. This is your basic paper chain tutorial, with the added bonus of a comparison of several different paper strip dimensions and a discussion of the qualities of paper chain that they produce....

I love it when an item comes in a good, solid box. Candy, small toys, electronics – if the box is sturdy – it’s going into my craft stash. These boxes come in super-handy during the holiday season because they can hold up to decoupaging and all sorts of glues. But for this craft, I’m doing something a little different. I’m taking all the pistachio shells that I’ve been saving (I never throw anything away) and turning them into a pistachio flower that will adorn the top of a beautiful (and former) candy box....

Reader Nicola Alesandrini gave us a heads up about a super cute, green craft project she just finished up. Nicola writes: She made the caddy out of found wood from fallen eucalyptus trees at her daughter’s school and her husband’s drill press but says that, “a hand saw and a power drill (with the bit marked for depth by wrapping it with tape) would work just as well.” For more details on the project, including how to win a completed caddy of your very own, check out Nichola’s blog....

ReSew is chock full of projects and tutorials on transforming old clothes into something new and exciting. The patterns are fairly easy to follow and customizable. Say you’re not a fan of the embellishments for the Sleeveless V or Sugar Stripes Dress? Simply leave them off! The projects in this book range from easy to hard, and prior working knowledge of a sewing machine is a good thing to have before tackling any of the redesigns....

Don’t get me wrong–my girlies LOVE their play silks that we dyed with Kool-aid. You just can’t go wrong with a food-grade fabric dye that’s so washable and wearable, and that results in such lovely colors. As the crafty perfectionist DIY momma, however, I looked at the girlies playing happily with their colorful play silks, and I wished for… more colors, perhaps. And predictable colors. That orange faded into a beautiful salmon pink, true, but I wanted real orange, and real yellow, and two kinds of blue–a rainbow of predictable colors, basically....

Play the guitar? Use a guitar pick? Ever wanted to make your own? You can! I use the Pick Punch to make DIY guitar picks, primarily out of old credit cards and gift cards, but also from a wide variety of materials that I wouldn’t necessarily have thought of in my days of store-bought guitar picks. To make a guitar pick out of a credit card or gift card using the Pick Punch, you simply find a good spot and punch it out!...

Wildlife rescues use fleece pouches to contain small and baby animals in a way that keeps them feeling safe and comfortable. It mimics the type of pouch that a marsupial animal will be familiar with, and recreates the feeling of a nest for other animals. It helps keep animals comfortably contained while they recover, and gives them a sense of security that a cage doesn’t. Requiring only four straight seams, these fleece pouches are also incredibly easy to sew....

Need to get healthy food into a kid? Sometimes you have to get creative! For inspiration, check out the artistic snack plates from Meet the Dubiens. These snack foods are so cute, and so attractively laid out, that your kids will know right away how yummy everything is going to be. Part of the beauty in this food art is the variety of foods on offer, so don’t be afraid to let your kids stretch their taste buds by trying new flavors....

You probably know by now that I LOVE Star Wars crafts, so a Star Wars Felt review? Kind of a no-brainer. It was less than 24 hours from the kit’s arrival (as a free review copy from a publicist) at our house to the moment that my kiddos and I unwrapped it and got crafting. My older kid doesn’t always have a lot of patience with crafting, although it’s one of my younger kid’s favorite activities....

Details here, or submit a post through the submission form. Previous editions of the Carnival of Green Crafts: First Carnival of Green Crafts Second Carnival of Green Crafts at BlogHer Third Carnival of Green Crafts: Trash Into Treasure Fourth Carnival for Green Crafts at Whip Up Fifth Carnival of Green Crafts Sixth Carnival of Green Crafts at Smidge

I love my magazines. I hate to part with them. My Time magazine subscription, along with Wired and Entertainment Weekly, I read once and then use them for collage or I donate them to our recycling center’s reuse sidewalk. Others however, such as, Vegetarian Times, Martha Stewart Living, Family Fun, or Make Magazine, I simply can never part with. A featured recipe that didn’t appeal to me then will appeal to me now, or a craft project that doesn’t appeal to me now will perhaps appeal to me later....

Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to be a time to spend money or buy a bunch of new junk–not when you can use your own junk to make all of these awesome things! 1. bee valentine mailbox. Oatmeal containers are a really popular choice for making valentine mailboxes. 2. button heart hair pin. Wear something festive AND upcycled! 3. cardboard wreath. Here’s an easy way to add a pop of holiday color to your front door....

For those hip to the online craft world, this might not be news to you, but to us here at CAGW, it is the uber example of reuse, and therefore we are in love. So, read all about it: newspaper yarn! Via Green Upgrader, artist Greetje van Tiem has created yarn from old newspapers by hand-spinning the paper. Not a spinner myself, I can not speak to how one would go about doing this themselves so I leave it to Green Upgrader again who have this great step by step tutorial on how to spin newspaper into yarn!...

This spinnery offers many types of fibers, which are all hand spun and then hand dyed or painted in small batches. You’ll find merino, superwash merino, cashmere, alpaca and tussah silk and blends as part of their yarn line. All the fibers come from small farms where Spiritual Trail has built a relationship with. And while they do carry conventional silk, 100% tussah silk and tussah silk blends make their way into Spiritual Trail Fibers’ offerings too....

Owned and operated by Becky Weed and Dave Tyler, this pair are still learning ways to green up their farm but currently practice crop and animal rotation, use plants instead of chemicals for fertilizers and never use antibiotics or hormones in their sheep. They are certified organic by the USDA and have a Predatory Friendly certification as well. That means they do not use lethal methods to deter predators. This is especially crucial in areas such as Montana and other farming states where important predators are on the come back, such as wolves....

Early 2007 provided me with the pleasure of trying out a hank of their newly-released Hand Spun Organic Cotton yarn. Used in tandem with O-Wool’s Balance yarn, I made a basic color block scarf that is unspeakably soft and beautiful to look at. Working with the Hand Spun Organic Cotton was nothing short of a vacation for my hands. Since then, I obtained four skeins of Dyed Organic Cotton yarn in Orchid, but have yet to finish the sweater I started with it (uh-oh)....

The new year is all about changes, and that probably means ridding your walls of those outdated calendars from last year, right? It also seems to be The Month of Promotional Calendars, when unwanted calendars from businesses flood our mailboxes. Rather than toss all of that paper into the recycle bin, you can get crafty and turn those old calendars into something new. Here are some crafty uses for old calendars to get you started!...

St. Patrick’s Day is coming! St. Patrick’s Day is one of my favorite holidays, on account of I like myself some rainbows. So, I pretend that St. Patrick’s Day is a holiday that’s made for pretty rainbow crafts, and I’m happy to oblige. Take these rainbow whole fruit popsicles, from The View from Great Island. The Popsicle recipe calls only for fruit, so there’s no added sugar to upset tummies or make kids hyper, but if you pop these into rainbow order, maybe blend some of the blueberry with banana to mellow the color for blue, then you’ve got a picture-perfect, rainbow-themed, St....

Looking to save a little money, build a kid’s creativity, have fun while making zero negative impact on the environment, or just spend some time being radically anti-consumerist? Check out my favorite upcycled cardboard things to build and play with. Younger kids can enjoy playing with these upcycled cardboard toys, while older kids and adults can also enjoy the process of creation and construction. coloring book. Make this coloring book using printed coloring pages and a fun food packaging cardboard cover for younger kids....

Is organizing your life on the list for this year? We’ve got an epic list of craft room ideas to keep your supplies in order all year long! Happy new year! Getting organized is a pretty popular new year’s resolution, but the actual act of organizing can be a little bit daunting, can’t it? I’m a big believer in little steps, especially when it comes to organizing. Don’t try to fix up your whole house at once....